Complexity and Time
研究发现，人们对延迟金钱奖励的估值呈现双曲线模式，这并非源于真实偏好，而是由评估延迟收益的复杂性导致的错误。该结果对理解时间偏好和设计实验方法有重要意义。
Abstract A large literature shows that people’s valuation of delayed financial rewards violates exponential discounting, exhibiting a hyperbolic pattern: high short-run impatience that strongly decreases in the length of the delay. We test the hypothesis that the hyperbolic pattern in measured discount rates over money reflects mistakes driven by the complexity of evaluating delayed payoffs. We document that hyperbolicity (i) is strongly associated with choice inconsistency and cognitive uncertainty, (ii) increases in overt complexity manipulations, and (iii) arises nearly identically in computationally similar tasks that involve no actual payoff delays. Our results suggest that even if people had exponential discount functions, complexity-driven mistakes would cause them to make hyperbolic choices. We examine which experimental techniques to estimate present bias are (not) confounded by information-processing constraints.